In the months since my last blog post I have
been busy, but not nearly as busy as Joe
Bausch, curator/photographer of the Bausch
Collection, MyPhillyGolf.com’s invaluable repository
of golf course photo galleries.

Since I last updated his progress a year ago, Bausch,
a Villanova chemistry professor, has played more golf than Tiger Woods and Phil
Mickelson combined and likely visited more golf courses than a fertilizer
rep.With Villanova out for the
summer, Bausch is up and out of his house every morning, off on another golfing
quest – always with his trusty camera.

The results of Bausch’s passion (some might say
obsession) are readily visible on MyPhillyGolf.com – the Bausch Collection
is now up to 370 galleries and growing by the day.

In addition to the 29 new galleries, Bausch is
most pleased about the expansion of the Bausch Collection from a regional resource
to include a new category we’re calling "Destination Courses."

The first destination course Bausch posted was
Erin Hills, host of last month’s U.S. Open.In recent days, he has added 10 more Destination
Courses.

The outpouring for Arnold Palmer has been
heartwarming and deserved.He was
truly one of the most remarkable American icons of the past century.

When the news alert hit my cell phone last
night, and the generous and respectful tributes began to pour in, I couldn’t
help but think back over my own interviews and personal encounters with The
King over the years.

A few:

- Whenever Palmer was in the room, it was a
pleasure to stand back and watch the adulation, the adoration.Everyone smiled when they saw Arnie.Everyone wanted to get a moment with
him, to tell him how much they loved him.Even very rich men swooned like little kids.Women melted, no matter how old he was.Arnie just exuded magnetism and charm.

Unlike many celebrities who shrink in such
situations, or become aloof, Arnie basked in it, loved it.He knew that to make fan for life, all
he had to do was be cordial and, say, "Hello, nice to meet you."

One such moment still stands out in my
mind.It was late in Palmer’s Champions
Tour career, when he was pretty much a ceremonial golfer but still the biggest
draw in the field.One day, when he
walked off the 18th green, he was approached by a woman who began to
gush over him.

I’ve seen plenty of famous people –
plenty of famous golfers – who would have blown right past that woman.Palmer did not.He stopped and listened to what the
woman had to say.

She launched into a tale about how 25 or so years
ago, when she was a girl, she had shyly run up to him at a tournament and asked
him to autograph her visor.He had stopped
then, as now.Now, years later,
that little girl was having her second moment with Arnie, holding out that
visor to show him that she still had it.

Palmer looked at the visor, then at the
woman.It was obvious he had no
recollection of her or of autographing her visor.But he didn’t tell her that.He smiled and said, "It’s so good to see
you again..."

Palmer left that woman on Cloud 9, just like he
left so many other people in life.

- The first time I ever interviewed Palmer was
in 1983, at a Champions Tour event outside Boston.He was 53 at the time, no longer
competitive, frustrated with his game.But he was still Arnold Palmer, in all his glory.

For much of the hour-long interview in his
hotel room, he sat at a table, autographing the stack of photos and memorabilia
that get sent to him every day.

-Palmer
always gave some of the best press conferences in golf.Many of today’s star players go through
the motions of press conferences reluctantly, sometimes sullenly.More than a few of them only show up for
press conferences because the PGA Tour requires it. They don’t need think they
need the press any more. If they have something to say, they’ll say it on
Twitter, not to the media.

Not Palmer.He valued his relationship with the
press, and even cultivated personal relationships with many of the writers and
TV people who covered him.Ask
Palmer a question and you’d likely to get a long, thoughtful, candid
answer.And he never ended a press
conference until all the questions had been asked and answered.

- It was no secret that Palmer’s relationship
with Ben Hogan was chilly at times.Even when Palmer was the biggest star on the PGA Tour, you wouldn’t know
it from Hogan’s reaction.

I once asked Palmer about his relationship with
Hogan.There was a long silence
before Palmer finally said, "He never called me by my name..."

- I shook hands with Palmer a number of times
over the years.He had maybe the
best handshake ever.Here
is a blog post I wrote about it in 2013:

When NBC’s Dan Hicks and Johnny Miller welcomed
Arnold Palmer into the booth at Bay Hill a few moments ago, Hicks joked that it
was good to feel Arnie’s handshake again.

I totally agree – you never forget Arnold
Palmer’s handshake.

It’s not that Arnie is one of those bone-crusher
guys, not at all. His is just a firm, friendly, manly
handshake. Two quick pumps and he releases.

What makes it so unforgettable is Arnie’s hand
itself: it’s big and strong and as padded as a major league catcher’s mitt.
The fingers he wraps around your hand are as thick and beefy as sausages.
You feel like you’ve fallen into the embrace of a mama bear or something.

And I don’t care who you are, or what you can or
cannot do for him, Arnie looks you in the eye, smiles and says it’s good to see
you. It’s one of the reasons Arnold Palmer is one of the great
ambassadors the game has ever had.

- In the early days of Golf Channel, before they had a
stable full of high-priced on-air talent, it was a leaner operation.Most nights, primetime programming
consisted of Peter Kessler hosting interview shows.

For one of those shows, on
Sunday nights, they flew in a steady stream of newspaper and magazine writers
down Golf Channel studios in Orlando.Oftentimes, they’d put you up overnight at Bay Hill Resort because Palmer,
who owned Bay Hill, was one of the founders and early investors in Golf
Channel.

I was one of the writers
they flew in, probably a half-dozen times.One Monday morning after the Sunday night show, I walked into the
restaurant at Bay Hill for breakfast, before heading to the airport.It was early and the place was almost empty,
except for staff and one table over in the corner.There sat Arnie and Winnie, just the two
of them, having breakfast.

Arnie looked up in my
direction and nodded.I nodded back.I didn’t want to intrude; I took a table
on the other side of the restaurant to give them their privacy.

- I once spent the morning
at the offices of Arnold Palmer Enterprises, across the road from Latrobe
Country Club and only steps from Palmer’s home.The offices also serve as a sort of
Palmer Museum, full of memorabilia from his legendary career.

Palmer’s longtime, loyal
assistant Doc Giffin, had promised to give me a
tour.Palmer himself wasn’t expected
to be there that day but it turned out he was. At one point, he came out of his
office, shook my hand and we chatted for a few minutes, before he was off to
make a phone call.

A day later, I was back,
along with a couple of fellow golf writers.Doc had invited us to play Latrobe
CC, the course where Palmer grew up and which he has owned for many years.Afterward, we had lunch in the Latrobe
grill room, a comfortable, no-frills place.It still ranks as one of my Top 10 days
in golf.

As I watched
Bill Lyon toss out the first pitch at the Phillies game last night on TV, I
must confess my eyes got a little watery.

At the risk of stating the obvious, Bill Lyon,
the retired Inquirer sports columnist who is chronicling his battle with Alzheimer’s
in the paper, is one of the all-time greats.

Besides being a superb and deservedly-celebrated
columnist, Bill is one of the most decent men I have ever known.He grew up on a farm in the Midwest and
he has made his way through life like -- well, like a man who grew up on a farm
in the Midwest.

In 33 years as the Inquirer’s premier sports
columnist, Bill never wrote a cheap hit-piece on anybody, at least not that I
saw.Oh, he would take somebody
down a notch or two, if they needed it, but he never did it in a mean-spirited
or snarky way.Why clobber somebody
over the head with a bat when you can do the job with a hatpin?

During my 26 years at the Inquirer, Bill
sightings were rare, even after I moved to the Sports Department in 1995.You might see him in the old office at
400 North Broad Street once, twice a year, tops – the joke was that Bill
was required to present himself in person to the editors at least once a year.

The beat writers who covered the Phillies,
Eagles, Sixers and Flyers saw Bill more often, usually in the press box at
games.Since my beat was golf, my
sightings were less frequent.

But every year, I could count on seeing Bill
for a week, at the Masters.For a
stretch of years there, the Inquirer sent me and Bill to the Masters.The Inquirer had prime seats,
side-by-side, in the media center, and I always looked forward to spending
serious time with a man who earned his place in the Philadelphia Sports Hall of
Fame at the keyboard.

For an entire week, Bill and I would talk
– about Augusta National, about Tiger, about office politics back home,
about his dear wife Ethel, who was battling cancer and emphysema.If he said it once, he said it a
thousand times, "She’s the toughest woman I know, like a linebacker."

Daily Routine

Our daily routine at the Masters was to arrive
at the media center in the morning, check our emails, read what other writers
and columnists had written that day, then take a stroll around the golf
course.Bill called Augusta
National the "cathedral of sports."He isn’t much of a golfer, if at all, but he always said the Masters was
his most fun week of the year covering sports.

We especially liked walking the back nine at
Augusta, lingering for an hour or so at Amen Corner.We might follow the leaders, or we might
not. It would be early in the day so the daily deadline pressure had not yet
kicked in.We were both waiting to
see what would unfold before we could begin planning what to write for the next
day’s paper.(This was in the days
before you had to live-blog every hole, every shot, every development.)

One of the truly great benefits of covering the
Masters is that press credential gives you access to the clubhouse.Most days, Bill and I would enjoy our
lunch --leisurely and luxuriously for a couple of newspaper hacks -- on the
clubhouse balcony overlooking the course.You never knew who might sit down at the table next to you – Amy
Mickelson and a couple of other player’s wives, big-time sports agents, a past
Masters champions, anybody from the world of golf.

No matter what we ate (burger, club sandwich,
chicken sandwich), both of us invariably ordered Augusta National’s famous
peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream for dessert.Once, when ordering the cobbler, I joked
to the waiter, "And don’t be stingy with the ice cream."

Bill laughed out loud.He loved that line.Thereafter, every time he would order
the peach cobbler, he would wink at the waiter and say, "And don’t be stingy
with the ice cream."

Big fan of Bill

One morning, when we were about to head out on
our daily trek around the course, Bill needed to pop into the restroom. As I waited by the door, I noticed a vaguely
familiar face approaching, headed out to the course.

After a moment, it dawned on me who it was: Joe
Queenan, the acerbic author, critic and essayist.Queenan has lived in NYC for years but
he has written extensively about having grown up in Philadelphia. As is his custom, I gather, he was
dressed in black, perhaps to reflect his often dark moods. "Aren’t you Joe
Queenan?" I asked.

Queenan didn’t know me from lunchmeat, so he
looked at me quizzically, then looked at the press credential hanging around my
neck."Philadelphia Inquirer," he
said, nodding.Queenan told me he
loved reading the Inquirer as a kid, especially the great sports columnist Bill
Lyon.

"Well, if you stand here for another minute or
two, you can meet him,"I said. Instantly,
Queenan’s scowl turned into a smile."Seriously?"

"Seriously," I said.

When Bill walked up, I introduced him to
Queenan, who proceeded to gush over him like a teenage girl meeting Beyonce.Bill stood there with his aw-shucks
modestly, thanking the stranger for his gracious comments.When Queenan left, Bill admitted he had
no idea who Queenan was.Later, back
at our laptops, I had Bill do a Google search on Queenan.He was suitably impressed.

No techie

Like many newspaper scribes of his generation,
Bill adapted to the transition from portable typewriters to laptops as best he
could.But he was no techie, not
even a little.Fortunately, Bill’s son
was a techie and he had rigged Bill’s laptop to function with almost one-button
ease.Compose a column?Two buttons, tops, to get it ready to
go.Send the column to the
office?Same thing.

Not everything worked every time, though.Occasionally, something would go horribly
wrong and Bill would panic that he might have accidently deleted his
column.Not that I am tech-savvy
myself but I would stop whatever I was writing and plunge in to assist, often
as my own deadline loomed.When we
would finally resolve the problem, the look of relief that would sweep over Bill’s
face was unmistakable to total.

Bill’s son also had his laptop set up so that
when Bill turned it off, the shutdown process would end with a photo of his
grandkids that popped up, in their jammies, saying, "Night, night, Pop-Pop."That was music to Bill’s ears.He would listen and watch his
grand kids with glee every evening, then turn to me with a satisfied grin, like
the fawning Pop-Pop that he was.

His column

From a beat-writer’s perspective, there was another
important thing about Bill that was impossible not to appreciate.Even though he was the big dog, the lead
columnist, before he settled on a topic for his column, he would run it past
me."What are you planning to
write?" he would ask."I don’t want
to get in your way."

That was flat-out, nice-guy courtesy.He didn’t have to do that.If he wanted, Bill could have stepped
all over whatever I was planning to write – that’s the prerogative of the
lead columnist.I would have had to
adapt.But he never did.If I was already halfway through a story
similar to what he had in mind, Bill would pick another topic.He always had two or three good ideas he
was considering.

Meatloaf and pancakes

In the early years, when Bill finished his
column and packed up to leave the media center, I would often invite him to
join a few of us for dinner, or take in one of the many functions and parties
that go on in Augusta during Masters week.

Thanks, but no thanks.Bill had his routine and he stuck to
it.Year after year, he stayed in
the same modest motel on the edge of town – I think it was a Days Inn –
where he could dine alone over a meatloaf dinner, or maybe the roast turkey
special, then return to his room to watch whatever ball game he could find on
TV.In the morning, after a hearty
breakfast and the morning paper, Bill would return to the golf course and we
would do it all over again.

One of Bill’s annual rites of spring was to buy
another item of Masters merchandise.Since he is not one to drop a bundle, his trip to the merchandise center
was well-considered.

Most of us come would out of the merchandise
shop with two or three bags full of swag for ourselves and our friends and
family back home.Bill was a
one-bag guy, usually a shirt with the Masters logo – well-made, carefully
picked. That was it.That was enough.

Bill is what he seems like

I miss those weeks at the Masters with
Bill.Of all the high-profile
people in the media I have known over the years, Bill may be the most
genuine.He does not present one
face to his reading public and another behind the scenes.He’s no Jekyll and Hyde prima donna. He is exactly what he seems like.

As I watched Bill toss out that baseball last
night, it was obvious that advancing age and Alzheimers are beginning to take
their tolls.It makes me sad.I makes me pine for the old times on the
balcony of the clubhouse at Augusta, where we could dine like kings and joke to
the waiter, "And don’t be stingy with the ice cream."

It’s been a while since I posted a fresh blog
– a year and three days, to be exact.It’s not that I didn’t write any new blogs; I did.I wrote several, about various topics
– the inconceivable irrelevance of Tiger, the gradual decline of Phil
(except for the British Open), the blossoming of youngblood
stars like Jordan Spieth and Jason Day, the embarrassing
rules disaster at the U.S. Open, and, of course, the maddening ups and downs of
my own golf game.But in each case,
after I looked back over what I had written, I’d "spike" them, as we used to
day in the newspaper business.

I don’t know, I just didn’t feel like I was
adding much to the conversation.

All the while, my associate Ron
Romanik was
blogging away.If you read Ron
regularly, you know that he does his own thing.He writes about who or what in golf that
catches his interest, which is good, because Ron is a smart guy and offers keen
insights and observations.

Ron recently invited me out for a round at his
new club, Coatesville Country Club, in Chester Country, which I had never
played.Coatesville, a 1921 Alex
Findlay design, turned out to be a reminder that there are plenty of friendly
clubs and choice courses in the area that I still haven’t gotten to.

While I fiddled, Professor Joe Bausch has
also been busy.Last time I wrote
about Joe, in July 2015, the total number of golf course photo galleries in his
Bausch Collection stood
at 274.Joe has added another 53 course
galleries since then, for a total of 327.

No course escapes Joe’s notice – take,
for example, Mermaid GC, a nine-hole, par 3 course
in Blue Bell.It’s right there alongside
elite clubs like Merion and Aronimink.As it happens, I am familiar with Mermaid.Twenty years ago, I used to take my son
and his buddy there when they were about 10 years old.

Joe B. has also ventured farther afield to
include (so far) 10 courses in the New York City/Long Island area.One of the most impressive is Trump Ferry Point, in the
Bronx, which has some of the most spectacular vistas this side of Pebble Beach
or Old Head in Ireland.I know that
because I’ve played all three.In fact, Joe and I made the trip up to Ferry Point together, only days
after it opened.

It’s hard to imagine anyone who takes more
pleasure in experiencing new courses than Joe.During the summer, when he is off from
his duties teaching chemistry at Villanova, Joe tees it up at least three or
four times on a slow week.

If he is not playing golf, Joe is researching
golf courses, fishing around in the microfiche in the library at Villanova. My friend and fellow golf writer Jeff
Silverman, who has written club histories for Merion and Gulph
Mills, credits Joe with turning up stuff about both clubs that he likely never
would have come across.

Actually, I just got an email from Joe a few
minutes ago.It’s Monday (most
private clubs are closed) and it’s 90 degrees outside, so Joe had no plans to
play today.But if I had something
going for the afternoon, he wrote, "I could be tempted..."

For the complete list of courses Joe has added
or updated since my last blog, check this out:

If you read between the lines, today’s news out
of the U.S. Golf Association probably dims future hopes of Merion Golf Club
getting another U.S. Open.

The USGA announced
three future Open sites: 2022 is going to The Country Club in Brookline, Mass.,
2023 is going to Los Angeles Country Club and 2024 is returning to Pinehurst
No. 2.

It is no secret that Merion, which has hosted
five Opens, including the 2013 Open, hopes to land another Open in the
"mid-20s," in the words of Bill Iredale, chairman of the club’s Championship
Committee.

For Merion’s hopes, the Open going to Brookline
in ’22 is a gut punch.

Here’s why:Over the past decade or so, the U.S.
Open has increasingly become not only a major sporting spectacle but also the
biggest moneymaker for the USGA.To
keep the money flowing, the USGA needs big venues, like Pinehurst No. 2, where
daily crowds approach 50,000, not smaller venues like Merion, where crowds in
2013 were limited to about half that size.

Brookline is Boston’s version of Merion –
an old, classic course that enables the USGA to demonstrate that it still cares
about the legacy of the game.But the USGA can only afford to bite the financial bullet so often.

Obviously, nothing is official.Heck, Merion could land the Open in 2026
or 2027, but don't count on it.

For a little background, check out this
exchange between Merion’s Iredale and David Fay,
former USGA executive director turned Golf Digest columnist.

Today, after the announcement, I spoke with Iredale to find out if the club had any reaction.He composed his thoughts in an email,
which is has agreed to let me quote:

We knew of (or were
pretty sure of) '22 and '23. We did not know of '24 but are not surprised.
Pinehurst is a terrific Open venue. We are now hoping for '26.

We have a good feeling
about hosting the Amateur in '30. In the meantime we are hosting the GAP AM
next year, the Women's Eastern Golf Assoc AM in '19
and the Pa AM in '21.

So we are content with
what we have in store but maybe, once again, it will get even better. In '04
and '05 we were content with the upcoming '05 Am and the '09 Walker Cup. Then
we were awarded the '13 Open.

Deja vu is possible!

Bill

Truth be told, these days, Merion is probably a
better venue for smaller events, like the U.S. Amateur and Walker Cup.In Iredale’s
email, the Amateur in 2030 obviously refers to the 100th anniversary
of Bobby Jones winning the Grand Slam at Merion.

LANCASTER – The
verdict is in and it is safe to say that Lancaster Country Club just pulled off
one of the best U.S. Women’s Opens in a long, long time.

Everything about the Open
this past week was first-rate.The players
loved the golf course, which, by the way, was in immaculate condition.USGA officials were practically giddy
over how well-received the championship was the by Lancaster community.On the weekend, there were 25,000
spectators a day.I’ve been to
Women’s Open’s where I doubt they had that many fans all week.

A big ingredient for success
was taking the Women’s Open to a small- to mid-size market, where locals
appreciated it and supported it in ways that big cities often don’t.

"It’s great when you're the
biggest story in town for the week," one USGA official told me.

My guess is, the USGA will
take the Women’s Open back to Lancaster CC as often as the club is willing to
host it.It sort of makes you
wonder why it took these two so long to get together in the first place.

FLYNN GEM: Another thing the Women’s Open did
was raise the stock of the Lancaster CC.I’ve played it a number of times over the years, and I walked it again
ta couple of times during the Open.The inescapable conclusion is that Lancaster CC is one of William F.
Flynn’s finest designs.

If you could somehow hook it
to a trailer hitch and drag it 50 miles closer to Philadelphia, Lancaster CC
would be regarded as perhaps the finest Flynn courses in town, right up there
with Huntingdon Valley CC and Rolling Green GC.You could make a strong argument that it
would be the No. 3 course in the area, behind only Pine Valley GC and Merion
GC.

KOREAN DOMINATION: If we needed any further proof, the Women’s Open
demonstrated that women’s golf in America is dominated by Koreans.Much of the time on Sunday, the
only non-Korean surname on the leaderboard was Stacy Lewis.

You can debate all you want
about whether that is a good thing or a bad thing for women’s golf, but it is
most certainly a thing.

FOX HUNT:FOX Sports is only two
championships into its gazillion dollar, long-term contract with the USGA, and
I’m no TV critic, but so far, I am underwhelmed.

When the FOX deal was
announced last year, I recall a certain amount of insinuation that NBC Sports
was too ho-hum, old-school, that FOX would introduce a modernized, jazzier
presentation.Cool commentators,
innovative graphics – the kind of stuff that FOX has brought to the their
NFL coverage.

So far, I’m not seeing
it.Either FOX vastly
underestimated how tough it is to produce golf tournaments, or the USGA vastly
overestimated what FOX brought to the table, other than much, much more money
than NBC.

The viewers are the
losers.In the booth, the
biggest disappointment is Greg Norman.He may be a Hall of Fame player, and a shrewd, self-made millionaire
many times over, but in the booth, he’s a journeyman.

I’ve sat through enough Greg
Norman interviews and press conferences to know that he is plenty smart, and
thinks quickly on his feet.So, why
is he finding it so difficult to bring that A-game to his commentary?Johnny Miller anticipates the next shot,
and senses what a player is thinking, then he lays it all out there for the
viewer, without fear or favor.Norman seems to be reacting to what he sees on the monitor in front of
him – and a bit timidly at that.

For Johnny Miller, his
livelihood depends on his insightful and candid commentary. For Norman, this
FOX thing is only a side gig, a break from his golf course design and many
business interests.You’ve got to
wonder whether he wants to be a TV guy badly enough to devote the time and
effort to be as good as viewers deserve.

Endings don’t come much crueler in golf
tournaments than the way Ben Polland melted down
Wednesday on the 72nd hole of the PGA Professional National
Championship at the Philadelphia Cricket Club.

It was painful to watch.I was sitting just off the 18th
green when the whole thing went down.

Polland, 24, an assistant pro at Deepdale GC in
New York, held a four-shot lead for much of the final day.But by the time he reached the 72nd
at Cricket’s Wissahickon Course, his lead over
playing partner Matt Dobyns was down to two.

But Polland was
cruising.He appeared to be in
command of himself and the tournament.It was truly his to lose, which he did.

A so-so tee shot left him with an awkward lie
in the fairway bunker at Cricket’s 18th, a hole notorious for wrecking
good rounds and upending the outcome of matches.Foolishly, one might suggest, Polland, 24, tried to muscle a 7-iron out of a bad lie, to
reach the green.Instead, he found
the creek that crisscrosses the 18th fairway.

Polland had no choice but to take a penalty drop, then he hit his fourth shot
to 10 feet.He putt – and his
attempt to escape with a bogey – came up short of the hole.

Meanwhile, Dobyns,
37, head pro at Fresh Meadow CC in Lake Success, N.Y., a wily veteran and
winner of the national club pro championship in 2012, hit his approach shot to
four feet and smoothed in the birdie putt.

Poof, a three-shot swing, just like that.Dobyns walked
off the green with the win and a $75,000 check.Polland walked
off the green looking like somebody had hit him in the gut with a fungo bat.

Afterward, he lamented the crummy lie in the
bunker and his effort, in hindsight, to go for the green.

Dobyns took no pleasure in watching Polland
crash and burn."When he hit the
ball and it went in the water, I was shocked," said Dobyns."I felt really bad for him, because I
know Ben and know him well."

Besides Dobyns, the
big winner of the week of Philadelphia Cricket Club, which staged the event magnificently.Dan Meersman,
director of grounds, had both the Wissahickon and
Militia Hill courses groomed to perfection, despite the 1½ inches of
rain that pounded the area the night before the championship started.

Also earning a bow was Jim Smith Jr., director
of golf at Cricket.He all over the
place – on Golf Channel, in the pro shop, schmoozing like the pro he
is.On Wednesday, Smith spent the
entire afternoon standing behind the 18th green, greeting every single
player in the field as they concluded their rounds. He got a lot a slaps on the back.